Page 130 of Chasing Never
It hits me as the answer comes out of his mouth—light doesn’t need darkness to be partial to exist. Light exists even in the absence of darkness.
The sphinx’s laugh reverberates through the otherwise empty room. “Wrong.”
My heart plummets out of my chest, the fear that we’ve lost the one chance at getting our baby back all-encompassing.
Nolan puts his hand on the hilt of his sword, but the sphinx shakes his head. “No need to defend yourself yet. I can be reasoned with. Should the girl figure it out, I will spare both of you and let her through.”
Tears sting at the edges of my eyes. I can’t bring myself to be relieved, not with the pressure of getting this right bearing down on me.
“I can’t think, Nolan,” I say, the tears beginning to stream now. “I’ve never been good under pressure.”
“Darling,” says my husband, taking me in his arms. “You can do this.”
I’m shaking at his chest, my mind whirring. The only answer I can think of is darkness, but I’m fairly sure that’s only coming to my mind as it’s the enemy of our last answer. But it doesn’t work. Darkness doesn’t need light to be partial to exist. There could be no light at all, and it would still be dark.
‘“Nolan, I can’t do this,” I say.
This time, instead of answering, he hugs me so tight he picks me off the floor, my feet weightless as they hang. I wipe the tears from my eyes and glance over his shoulder, where our silhouettes merge in a single shadow stretching across the floor, cast by the glowing lamp behind me.
My heart stops.
Because darkness might not need light, partial or not, to exist.
But a shadow does.
“A shadow,” I whisper.
“Very good, but only the girl may go forward,” says the sphinx, just as Nolan sets me down. The sphinx rests its head on the ground, then opens its mouth, its tongue rolling out like a carpet leading to a door at the back of the sphinx’s throat.
I offer one last glance to my husband, then proceed toward the door.
CHAPTER 57
The room I find is built more like a shrine than a nursery. While the walls are the same glistening onyx as the rest of the lair, these have columns cut into them. Underneath an archway at the back of the room is a dais. And on the dais is a crib, made of bone-white material—no—made of bone. I shudder, but it’s half from fear, half from relief.
Because inside of the crib is a baby.
I told myself beforehand I would be quiet, careful not to wake him. Now that the moment has come, it’s only fear for his life—fear for my husband’s, too, if he cries out—that keeps me from sprinting toward him now. I want nothing more than to close the distance between us. But my love for him controls my steps, smooths them out, soft and gentle and deliberate. Every step is agony. Every second another where even the bones in my arms cry out for him.
Finally, after what seems like ages, I reach the edge of the crib and peer down into it. I was correct in assuming he would look so different from the child I had held on the beach that day. He’s nothing like the little boy I held out in my arms like a sacrifice to the Sister.
Where I was wrong was in thinking I wouldn’t recognize him.
The day I lost him, his face had been shriveled, warped, confused. Since then, the wrinkles on his forehead have filled out. Fat now causes his cheeks to bulge, and there’s a tranquility to the way he sleeps. When he yawns and stretches his arms out, I jump a little, and a fragment of my heart wilts, then regrows like a seed left to die in the earth only to be reborn the next spring.
Love I’ve never felt overwhelms me.
It’s different from what I felt on the beach. Though that was love all the same, it was infused with adrenaline, fear, and what I now recognize as an obsessive desire to hand my child over to the Sister. None of that afflicts me now. All I see is my child, who looks so much like Nolan, more now than even the day he was born.
I’m crying, but I can’t even bring myself to blink the tears away, lest in the moment my lids shut, I lose sight of him even for a second and open my eyes to find he’s disappeared.
A tear falls and hits his cheek, and he startles. Fear slices through me. He opens his mouth to scream, and I prepare myself to take him and run. But just as I go to grab him, he blinks his eyes open and looks at me. They’re blue like mine, a pale color I find I prefer on him. We stare at each other for one long moment. And it’s as if he’s forgotten he was about to cry, about to scream, forgotten his fear altogether.
He coos softly, and my heart melts.
I reach into the crib and pull him into my chest, amazed at how he cranes his head back to look at me. When I first held him, I had to support his neck. Now, he seems so aware, like there’s an intelligence behind his eyes, a knowledge of the gravity of our situation. And though he can’t understand language, it’s as if he understands the need to stay quiet.
Or maybe it’s all true, what they say. Maybe, somewhere within him, he has not forgotten me.
